nearly seven years ago, I fell into your trap. like Alice fell down the rabbit hole, I was enticed, infatuated, romanticized, obsessed. I love the power I felt from skipping meals, the compliments I got from my middle school friends and dance teachers on my weight loss. you made me strong, while my peers were weak with their sandwiches and juice boxes and snacks at sleepovers. I counted it as victories when collar bones and ribs appeared, felt proud at the black spots I saw when I stood up, smiled at my dry skin and cold hands. Teachers started calling home, and my mom began to cry at dinner every night, but you whispered reassuringly in my ear. After a while, though, you weren’t so appealing. You lost your spark, and so had I. When I began to eat again, I naively thought I had beat you. But you, being the bastard you are, fooled me. You took my strength and turned it right back into weakness, and convinced me to eat everything I could and then shove my fingers down my throat. No longer could I go to dinner with friends, for now, I couldn’t even make the excuse of not being hungry. No. Now, I had to eat everything in sight, as fast as I could, and get rid of it as soon as I was done. I stole money from my parents and friends so I could buy food to binge on, because you promised me it would make me feel better. You convinced me to steal from grocery stores, to throw up in bushes and trashcans. You made me take laxatives and diuretics, set alarms for the middle of the night to do exercises in my dark, haunted bedroom. You made staring down a toilet bowl more important than any relationship, goal or passion in my life. In fact, you made me toss all of those out. My teeth rotted, my hair fell out, my grades dropped, my friends left, my weight fluctuated, my throat bled, and my spirit was broken. “But you have me,” you would taunt. Because of you, I spent nearly 6 months in treatment centers, 3 of which I was confined to a wheel chair because my heart was so weak. But even once I quieted your voice, you never truly left me. You still convinced me to weigh myself behind my therapists back, to skip a meal when I ate too much the previous one, to work out harder when I ate a “forbidden” food. You allowed to me put on weight and be healthy and then laughed at me every time I looked in a mirror, even though I was healthy. Although you only convince me to skip a few meals or purge every now and then, I’m fucking done. I’m done hating myself, I’m done living my life out of fear and self hatred and that constant lingering notion that I am never good enough. You have taken so much from me, and though it will not be easy, once and for all, I am going to look you in the eye and take my fucking life back.
